What is iCloud Photo Library & How to Use It?

iCloud Photo Library which is one of the Apple’s online service, allows you to seamlessly access, manage, edit, and share pictures and videos from your Apple device such as iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Though iCloud is free to use if you want to store any real amount of data, you will have to pay a certain amount for the iCloud plan. A lot of people who have Mac or some other Apple device have the question in their mind that whether they should turn on their iCloud Photo Library, whether it will be safe, whether it will be secure, whether the cost that they will pay for an iCloud plan will be worth it.

In this article, we will tell you everything about iCloud photo library and will try to answer the above questions that might arise in your mind.

What is iCloud Photo Library?

Basically, an iCloud Photo Library windows is a separate service which can be enabled by you according to your requirement for Photos for Mac as well as Photos for iOS. iCloud photo library storage uploads all the images that you have clicked or have stored in a library of your iPhone or Mac to itself. This will include all any imported DSLR or other photos that you might have added to your Photos library on your Apple device in addition to iPhone or iPad photos and screenshots.

The Pros of iCloud Photo Library Storage:

Perhaps the biggest advantage for iCloud Photo Library storage is that, for once, Apple’s iCloud team has made a wonderful sync product with this iCloud photo library. There have been no major issues reported with iCloud photo library missing or icloud photo library not syncing images from the library.

You can not only actually access your photos from any device but you can also manage them from anywhere.

With iCloud Photo Library storage you can access your photos and videos from everywhere. Even if you are offline, you can still be able to view low-resolution thumbnails of any pictures that you haven’t yet downloaded locally to your device. You can also manage your library in offline mode. You can delete an image or add it to an album while you are not having any internet access, and all of that syncs when you pop back online. There will not be any problem as icloud photo library not syncing in offline.

In addition to all this, if you use macOS High Sierra and iOS 11, then managing your photos that have people in them will also get easier. The People album will automatically find faces in the photos, then you can identify them as people that you know and my icloud photo library will sync all of its data across your Apple device. This will help you in a way that now you will no longer have to enter any data manually on each device individually.

The editing that you make gets synced across your devices

With icloud photo library, you do not have to make multiple copies of your images to edit them anymore. iCloud Photo Library will sync your non-destructive image edits across your devices. This means that you can start editing an image on your iPhone and finish the editing on your Mac or you can undo all the editing on your iPad.

It has optimized storage:

The iCloud Photo Library Storage has an option for optimizing automatically. It intelligently takes a percentage of the storage space from your device for high-resolution photos and any other image or video that cannot fit in that space get stored as low-resolution thumbnails. This space is variable. It does not take every small free space that you have; instead, it adjusts itself by appropriating a portion of your free space to photo storage.

If you want to download a new image stored on iCloud, you just have to click on it. By this, your older downloaded images will get removed from the device making room for the new ones. You will not face any problem as icloud photo library low disk space with it.

Secure and strong backups

The primary goal of iCloud Photo Library is to provide you with the same library on all your devices. But along with it, it will also keep a copy of that library safe and secure on iCloud using Apple’s CloudKit framework. If in case, your hard drive gets damaged, iPhone gets waterlogged or you face some other hardware disaster, then your images will be safe and secure and ready to re-download.

The Cons of iCloud Photo Library Storage:

Though iCloud Photo Library is very good to use, but it still has some of its flaws.

The iCloud photo library storage cost

The cost of Apple’s iCloud photo library storage has improved greatly as compared to the time when it was launched. The iCloud photo library storage costs $10 per month giving you a 2TB storage space for your photos and other items that you might want to keep.

While 2TB storage space will be enough for most of the people and iCloud Photo Library storage for still $10 each month in front of Google’s unlimited offer will not look very good.

You do not get the choice to not sync certain photos

Though CloudKit is very secure to keep photos, still, there might be many images that you want to keep offline. It might be due to any professional or personal reasons. Unfortunately, iCloud Photo Library poses a problem as icloud photo library not syncing certainly selected photos. It is either all-or-nothing with it. If you want to keep some photos offline, then you have to move them out of Photos for Mac or iOS for this.

Final Conclusion

After knowing all the pros and cons of icloud photo library, we can conclude that iCloud Photo Library is an excellent way to sync all your images and video with all your devices. It gives you impressive syncing abilities, offline photo access, and easy management and backup for even large libraries. For those people who were previously unsure about what they have to do, hopefully, we are able to clear up your doubts regarding the pros and cons of iCloud Photo Library to help you make the right decision for yourself.